An Afternoon in Doncaster

 

A Norman window head

Arriving in Doncaster on the X19 bus, having had a good look at St. Wilfrid’s church, the historic architecture and Castle Hill Quarry in Hickleton, before doing a bit of shopping, I decided to have a quick look at the new Danum Gallery, Library and Museum (DGLAM).

 

The Danum Gallery, Library and Museum

 

Over the years, I had visited the old museum on Chequer Road many times and passed by the Doncaster High School for Girls (1910), built in red brick with terracotta dressings, which I can only ever remember as an empty building. Although not listed, I have always thought that it is an interesting building, but feared that it would eventually be demolished. 

 

The retained facade and glass enclosure

I was therefore very pleased to learn that the facade would be retained and form part of the new building, which is sited next to the modern complex on Watergate that contains the Savoy cinema, the Cast theatre and the Doncaster MBC offices; however, I was unaware that the old facade was to be enclosed within a glass frontage and, approaching from Hallgate after photographing No. 27 for the British Listed Buildings website, I was quite surprised when I saw it. 

 

The geology display

 

Having known well the ‘modernised' museums in Sheffield, Rotherham and the Chequer Road museum in Doncaster, I was interested to see how the geology display in particular compared to its predecessor, especially since the new galleries occupied a considerably reduced floor space. 

 

A fossil tree trunk from Hickleton Colliery

 

Disappointingly, as with Sheffield and Rotherham, the geology displays have been severely downgraded, with only a single large display case dedicated to this once highly appreciated science. These include a fossil tree trunk from the Upper Carboniferous period, fossil plants embedded in grey siltstone, coal and a Permian dolomitic limestone block containing a large plant, which is thought to be related to the monkey puzzle tree. 

 

A fossil in dolomitic limestone from Hampole Quarry

In addition to the Carboniferous and Permian specimens, the Triassic period is represented by a section of a drill core from Austerfield pumping station, which is a red sandstone from the Sherwood Sandstone Group – an important aquifer in the Doncaster region. 

 

A Triassic sandstone drill core

The highlight is probably the Jurassic fossil ichthyosaur from Lyme Regis in Dorset, which was originally thought to be a plaster cast from a specimen elsewhere. In 2008, it was identified by Dean Lomax, who has since become a specialist in the subject, as a new species – Ichthyosaurus anningae. 

 

Ichthyosaurus anningae

 

I can’t recall much about the archaeology displays at the Chequer Road museum and I was therefore interested to see the display case containing the shaft of an Anglo-Saxon cross, with Celtic style knot work, a large fragment of a wheel cross and a Norman window head. 

 

An archaeological display

 

Very strangely, there are no labels to describe these and many of the other museum specimens, with digital technology apparently being used instead; however, the gallery attendant on duty was unable to shed much light on these and I moved on without knowing anything about the interesting artefacts that I had just looked at. 

 

A Roman altar stone

The Roman occupation of Doncaster is represented by an altar stone, which is one of the earliest finds of the period, but the only other exhibit that really appealed to my particular interests in stone in all of its forms was the model of Conisbrough Castle. 

 

A model of Conisbrough Castle

The 45 minutes that I spent having a quick look at DGLAM wasn’t enough time to judge its merits as a whole, but I was conscious of the need to get to Doncaster Market before catching a train to Rotherham, on my way back to Treeton. 

 

A Rich Seam by Laurence Edwards

 

I stopped briefly to take a few photographs of a sculpture on Printing Office Street – A Rich Seam by Laurence Edwards – which is constructed with two 25 tonne large rough-hewn blocks of Crosland Hill sandstone, with inset bronze sculptures of the faces of miners who worked at the coalface in Doncaster. 

 

Bronze heads depicting former coal miners

 

This example of public art in Doncaster, one of many that has been erected in the last 25 years, received very mixed reactions when it was completed in 2021. Personally, I preferred the artwork that previous occupied the site – various carved seats depicting local history and nursery rhymes by Mike Disley – but these had become seriously damaged or vandalised over the years.

 

A detail of A Rich Seam